With recent developments of semi-conductor industry, use of highly toxic hydride gases such as arsine, phosphine, monosilane, diborane, etc. has markedly increased.
These toxic components are essentially required as raw materials or doping gases in the production of silicon semi-conductors or compound semi-conductors. From considerations for environmental hygiene, maximum permissible concentrations of arsine (AsH.sub.3), phosphine (PH.sub.3), monosilane (SiH.sub.4), diborane (B.sub.2 H.sub.6), and hydrogen selenide (SeH.sub.2) are 0.05 ppm, 0.3 ppm, 5 ppm, 0.1 ppm, and 0.05 ppm, respectively. These toxic gases are usually sold in bombs of about 0.1 to 50 l volume. Examples of commercially available bombs of these gases are shown below.
______________________________________ Bomb Concen- Packing Volume tration Pressure Gas (l) (%) Base Gas (Kg/cm2G) ______________________________________ AsH.sub.3 47 10 hydrogen 75 PH.sub.3 10 10 hydrogen 30 SiH.sub.4 10 100 none 200 g (weight of packed gas) B.sub.2 H.sub.6 47 3 argon 20 SeH.sub.2 10 10 hydrogen 75 ______________________________________
For the purpose of preventing air pollution with the toxic gas leaked out of the bomb, these bombs connected to a pipe for feeding the gas to a semi-conductor process, etc. are usually placed in a container called bomb box to which a ventilation duct is connected. Nevertheless, there is no denying a danger of unexpected leaking of a gas so sudden and rapid that a bomb is exhausted in a short time like 5 to 10 minutes to contaminate the surrounding air. It has been, therefore, keenly demanded to take measures to insure the safety from such an accident.
Known methods for removing arsine, phosphine, etc. from a gas are divided into a wet process which comprises absorbing and decomposing the toxic component in a scrubber and a dry process which comprises passing a gas through a column packed with a cleaning agent such as adsorbents or oxidizing agents.
The conventional wet process generally has problems such as corrosion of the apparatus due to the use of an absorbing liquid and difficulty of post-treatment of the absorbing liquid, and thus the wet process entails cost for maintenance of the apparatus.
Known dry processes include use of a gas mask filled with activated carbon for removal of arsine, phosphine, etc. contained in air as is used as chemical weapons. By taking advantage of adsorbability of activated carbon, various attempts have been made to obtain improved removal performance by incorporating various substances into activated carbon by absorption. Examples of these cleaning agents include an adsorbing agent for removing arsine or phosphine which comprises activated carbon as a carrier having incorporated therein a copper compound, an alkali metal compound, and at least one of compounds of Al, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, etc. as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,532,115; and an adsorbing agent comprising activated carbon having impregnated therein iodine or an iodine compound and a metal sulfate, etc. as disclosed in JP-A-60-71040 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application").
Apart from these cleaning agents using activated carbon as a carrier, the present inventors previously proposed a molded cleaning agent comprising (1) cupric oxide and (2) at least one metal oxide selected from the group consisting of silicon oxide, aluminum oxide and zinc oxide as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,743,435 (EPC 0194366).
Although the above-described adsorbing agents comprising activated carbon as a carrier are capable of removing toxic components, e.g., arsine, phosphine, etc., in relatively low concentrations, their activity is too low to remove high concentration toxic components contained in a gas flowing at a high rate. Besides, there is a fear that iodine resulting from reduction with the hydride gas is scattered in the gas treated.
On the other hand, the molded cleaning agent according to U.S. Pat. No. 4,743,435 exhibits greatly increased capacity of removing toxic components per unit weight and volume as compared with the conventional cleaning agents and is, therefore, capable of removing a large amount of toxic components. This cleaning agent is, however, still insufficient in rate of cleaning depending on conditions of use. Therefore, it cannot sufficiently and rapidly cope with such a case of emergency as sudden leakage of toxic gas from a bomb.
As the case stands, it has been demanded in the art to develop a cleaning method exhibiting further improved removing capacity enough to meet sudden emergency such as leakage of a large quantity of a toxic gas.